It’s been a tumultuous decade or so for college sports.
The off-the-field landscape has changed completely thanks to rules allowing players to profit from their name image and likeness, and making it easier to transfer schools.
But Congress is trying to bring some stability through the Protect College Sports Act, which would regulate everything from media rights, to conference realignment, to when coaches can switch jobs.
Sponsored by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the bill will soon receive a vote in the U.S. Senate.
John Brice, a college sports insider for USA Today, spoke with Texas Standard about the bill’s impact and likelihood of passage. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what the bill contains, can you help us understand why supporters say this legislation is necessary?
John Brice: Well, it’s necessary because really the entirety of this decade, college sports and college football in particular has sort of gone off the rails since the onset of the transfer portal era. That is, the NCAA adopted earlier this decade with basically free unlimited player movement on top of that.
Not long thereafter you had the NIL era — name, image, and likeness. And then just last summer, the formal codification of the house settlement, which allowed then schools to directly pay student athletes through revenue share.
So when you talk to college coaches, administrators, the most change in the sport in the last 60 years have occurred in the last five years and there are not proper guardrails in place . It’s truly any cliche you want to use: Wild West, untamed frontier — any of it, they all apply.
And I find it interesting that Congress is stepping in, as opposed to just the NCAA or whatever. Tell me more about that.
Well, Congress has had to step in frankly because the leagues, the power conferences, especially across the country — the Big 10, the SEC, the ACC, the Big 12, which has a number of teams in Texas — they all asked for federal intervention because they couldn’t settle on a uniform rules themselves. They also need antitrust protection.
And so they had to ask for federal intervention because the fact of the matter is they all want rules, but none of the conferences, none of the coaches, none of the leaders wants to be the entity that sets the rules because they all believe that will ultimately be used against them in recruiting or other marketing tactics or what have you.
And so they all agree uniformly on a need for guardrails, rules that everyone is supposed to adhere to. They also all freely admit no one is obeying the loose rules that are in place right now.
So tell me about some of these guardrails. What would be the most important provisions in the bill?
You know, I think the major thing is, and we wrote extensively on this last week, in order to get the Big 10 and SEC stamp of approval to push forward with the Protect College Sports Act, they wanted to increase that rev share number immediately. So there’s an increase of $25 million, up to $25 million total. That’s probably the number one element of the bill.
Now that final $5 million is earmarked only for women’s sports and Olympic non-revenue sports. They allowed some potential for conference expansion, which has been another driving element of this chaos in this decade, but it’s a 171-page bill. It’s got a lot of stuff in there. And that’s why it’s significant.
It is bipartisan. It also has the quote-unquote Lane Kiffin rule, but Lane Kiffin’s hardly the first coach to ever leave before the season ended, but it provides some penalties and says there will be federal intervention if a coach leaves his team before that team is done with its competition calendar.
And I know you’ve mentioned also money that college athletes are able to earn through their name, image, likeness, et cetera. How would that look moving forward if this bill were to pass?
Yeah great question and a significant component also of the bill.
Initially the bill was drafted to say that schools could not provide direct facilitation for NIL deals, those name image and likeness deals, and that if they did, through like a third party vendor — let’s say a school is a Nike apparel school or an Adidas apparel school — well those deals still had to, quote, “pass the true business purpose test.”
And now with this Protect College Sports Act Bill proposal, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. The third party deals arranged by the school, like with those apparel or with Learfield or its multimedia rights partner, they will not, moving forward, have to pass the true business test.
There still has to be some proof of legitimacy to the deal. The student athlete here, she would still have to appear in like marketing campaigns or social media posts or go do autograph signings on behalf of the school-affiliated entity. But it would no longer be restricted the way that it is under the current terms of the House settlement.
This would have some pretty huge impacts because this is not just football, but all college sports.
Yeah, that is correct. When a coach could leave is primarily targeted at football. The language in the bill actually only addresses football coaches, but it would have dramatic impact on the money of sports.
It also seeks to address what we discussed earlier, that is the unlimited transfer. And it looks to make the transfer a one-time thing unless a student athlete loses his or her coach for whatever reason, then he or she would be free to transfer again.
But you have guys right now that are transferring four times in four years to four different football programs. A coach told me last month when I was in Frisco at Big 12 media days that he had a guy leave for $24,000 more over one year, but he went from being 12 hours short of graduation to 40 hours short of graduation at his new school, with only one year of college eligibility remaining.
And so the naysayers don’t like the one-time transfer element in the bill because they say it restricts player freedom. I do believe the coaches, administrators, the politicians, the people are genuinely concerned about ensuring that these student-athletes still have a chance to graduate college. And the numbers reflect, the more you transfer, the lower your graduation rate becomes.
And Republicans bringing this bill to the floor in the Senate, they seem fairly confident that it’ll pass there. But I’m curious, are there any indications of how this bill may fare if it were to reach the House of Representatives?
There are competing narratives there about how it will fare in the House of Representatives. I do know with the Republican House, Republican Senate, and a Republican in the Oval Office that timing is seen as crucial — but again, this is a bipartisan bill.
In the Senate, they believe they have the 60 votes to get it passed. They, in fact, though, are wanting to get closer to 70 votes, I was told by multiple people this week on Capitol Hill, because they believe they really need the momentum. If they get somewhere between 65 and 70 votes, they believe that sends a clear message to the House about what their mandate is with the bill.
That doesn’t mean there can’t be additional modifications or deliberations when it gets to the House floor. But also President Trump earlier this week came out publicly and spoke about the bill and said it’s a priority and that he wants to see this gotten done. He wants to see this accomplished.
So the further it advances, the more pressure there is on the House. And we know that President Trump will not be shy about amplifying that pressure in a public setting if he feels the need.
